“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.” -Tennessee Williams ‘

I came across this quote when I was shopping with my mom in a store called Urban Violet not too long ago. It struck me in a take-your-breath- out type of way. (Words of affirmations is my love language okay!!!) And to say the least – I’ve been thinking about what Tennessee Williams said. And I think he might have been on to something.

The world needs more violets.

Because the world we live in is full of a lot of rocks.

Society and the media in general have created a narrative that encourages people, and especially youth, to have the mentality of “do not care about what anyone thinks of you.” And while I believe that this isn’t necessarily a bad mantra to live by, I think that it has affected my generation’s ability to think about ourselves objectively, which has lead to us developing superiority complexes toward our peers and having a lack of self-awareness. We have taken “not caring about what anyone thinks of you,” and turned it into “I don’t care how I treat people because it is my own life.” It makes us believe we are better than everyone. It makes us ugly. It turns us into rocks.

But, as Tennessee Williams says… violets (supposedly) break the rocks. Our culture needs to learn how to embrace ourselves without letting our ego get in the way of how we maintain relationships and show up in places. You are allowed to be passionate, driven, and successful. You are also allowed to be emotional, have compassion, and be happy for others. It does not have to be one or the other.

Recently, I cam across a quote, (I know I come across many), that read: “I did the being edgy and self-deprecating thing. It gets old. I want to be soft and easily impressed. I want to appreciate all the little things that make me happy the same way I’ve dwelled on every sing thing that upsets me.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I want to emphasize this a billion times !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s not trendy to be emotionally vulnerable or in tune with our feelings. I do not think it ever will be. But, here’s what I do think:

You have to emulate what you want to be. If you want to be happy, you have to be happy for other people. If you want to be understood, you have to listen. If you want people to be compassionate toward you, be compassionate toward others. If you are seeking love, you have love others. What we project into the world becomes our reality.

If we dwell on our failures, our lives will become surrounded by them. If we focus on the light at the end of the tunnel, our lives will be illuminated. It is all about how we respond and react to the situations thrown at us.

It is easy to let the world make us cold and bitter and ugly. Because a lot of the world is cold and bitter and ugly.

But, a lot of it is not.

The secret to a beautiful life, it to recognize the beauty in it. Easier said than done. But, we need to have hope. The future depends on it.

Because our hope inspires. It is beautiful. It might just be the closest thing we have to magic on this Earth. It is also free. And it is transformative. And it is why violets are beautiful. And violets break rocks because rocks are heavy, depressing, mean…. ugly. In short, kindness kills. (It’s vicious if you ask me).

If we could replace all of the rocks with violets, we would liberate ourselves from the shame and secrets we hold. We would be able to set those things down. And we would be able to grow… we would be able to live in a world that supports and uplifts one another, instead of being in constant competition with each other.

The world is not always full of sunshine, rainbows and happy endings.

But if we learn to respond to our failures, (and other’s failures), with compassion and empathy, instead of judgement, it will be a happier place to live. It will be happier place for our children to live.

And if we learn have empathy when someone disappoints us I think we will see the world change before our eyes.

We need to be the people we needed in our worst moments.(Regardless if these people were there for us or not). We need to show up to spaces aware of how we change the energy and how our presence affects others. We need to care about what people think of us, (to an extent), because we need people, and people need us.

Mercy and forgiveness will always be more powerful than revenge and hate. There is a lot to be said about the strength it takes to choose the first two. Our grace and our humility is what makes us beautiful.

Our pain and anger will drag us through life. Our grace and humility will carry us through it.

No one cares about your life. At least not as much as you think they do.

Humans are inherently selfish. We live in our own little world that solely revolves around us. But, we often forget that everyone else is living in their own bubble too. We have a tendency to assume that we are relevant in everyone’s life- that we are more important than we actually are. (Or that people think about us nearly as much as we think about ourselves… they don’t).

And while this seems like a really depressing concept, I’m here to assure you that it is not. Actually, the fact that no one really cares about you life should be liberating.

Once we embrace that we are entirely up to ourselves, we can stop censoring our personalities to fit society’s standards and constructs of what is acceptable and “cool.”

I struggle with this idea every day. Should I post the Instagram with the filter I like, or the one that goes with my theme? Should I say hi to this person on the bus, even though we don’t really know each other? How soon should I respond to this boy’s snapchat? Do I really get a large fry from McDonald’s even though I feel like the person I’m with is judging me? (the answer to this one is always yes).

The point is: this is your life. And if you are going to live it for other people, then it really isn’t your life at all. We are most happy and comfortable around people who are relatable, honest, and genuine, rather than people who are actively trying to portray themselves a specific way. And while that seems like such an easy concept, we often fall victim to society’s pressure to act and look a certain way.

I recently came across a tweet that said “I’ve always been weird about expressing emotions to the world. I’ve always thought that I am the girl who has to have everything together, but what I’ve learned is that being relatable is what makes people feel like they are not alone.”

We are always trying to make it appear that we are living our best lives, like we are thriving in all aspects of our existence, and we shield our hurt and our vulnerability from the world. But WHY?

Our imperfections, our mistakes, and our failures are what makes us human and bonds us together. We are never too cool for failure. We are never too cool for pain. We are never too cool to be a human.

The drama queen in me often thinks of how life is literally ticking away as we lay here wasting time. We need to STOP waiting to post Instagrams until it is prime posting time. We need to STOP waiting to tell someone we love them because we are scared of what our friends are going to think. We need to STOP putting our dreams on hold because we feel we are too inadequate to fulfill them.

Let’s stop living our life to impress people (because friends who care about stupid things like what sorority you are in or what color your hair are aren’t actually your friends). And let’s start doing things we genuinely enjoy doing. More importantly, let’s stop preventing ourselves from doing things because we are worried about what other people will think about us.

Start a YouTube channel! Drop out of school! Fall in love! Stop acting like you don’t give a fuck when you actually do! Our world is too exciting to not live it passionately! (or to not use exclamation points)!

If you have made it to the end of this blog post/rant/creative outburst that I’m not quite sure makes sense… know that this is me being “uncool.”

In all honesty, I have concealed my identity as a writer for so long because I feel like it is ‘uncool.’ I literally tremble when I post a blog and I cringe when I think of certain people reading it. I don’t know why.

But here’s what I do know. This is my life. And writing makes me feel alive. (And that’s all that really matters).

New Years has always been so inspiring to me. It’s a time to romanticize ourselves being anyone or doing anything. A new beginning.

But recently, I came across a quote that struck me. It says:

“Waste time this year. Go for long, rambling walks. Write poems. Try a new recipe just because. Pray. Paint. Knit something. Read that big old book. Work on your novel. Our world is obsessed with productivity, but ‘unproductive’ hours are the most soul-shaping parts of our lives.” -Joy Clarkson

As I read this, I began wondering why New Year’s resolutions are often meant to restrict us, rather than fulfill us. We waste so much energy creating goals that are centered around things like losing weight, saving money, and working more that we neglect to think about how we spend our free time.

When was the last time someone asked you what you loved doing? I’m asking you right now. If you can’t immediately think of 5 things, I am challenging you, (myself included), to make 2019 more about spontaneous discovery, creation, and love- and less about work.

There has to be more to our lives than how we choose to spend our 9-5. Even if your work makes you happy and you genuinely enjoy going, if we don’t spend time pursuing passions and hobbies and spending time with the people we love, we are bound to get stuck in a routine that restricts us.

The capitalistic world we live in demands that work rules our lives, but our soul demands the opposite. We rarely remember the habitual parts of our work day; yet we can recite quotes from our favorite movies and films years after watching them.

In 2019, I have the goal that for each productive hour I spend working, I spend another hour being unproductive- doing something I love. I want to stop wasting time scrolling through my feeds on social media or binging Netflix and encourage myself to actually do things I love.

While I love social media as much as the next basic, twenty year old girl in Delta Gamma, I feel like it has taken over our lives almost as much as work has. (Like why am I scrolling through Venmo as a source of entertainment)???

Our free time is valuable. So valuable that it should only be spent doing things that bring us joy. Specifically, I have three goals about how I want to be more unproductive individual.

I want to read 52 books this year. (1 book a week for a year)! I’m only a couple weeks in, but I’ve already noticed so many positive benefits from doing this. When I read, I feel inspired and creative. And strangely enough, even though reading for fun is “unproductive,” I feel extremely accomplished and proud each time I finish a book.

I want to spend more time outside of my room and with my roommates/family. Sure we all need alone time sometimes, but hanging out with friends and family can turn an extremely ordinary day into something extraordinary. Even though I am extremely introverted, I have noticed that having a simple conversation with someone instead of hanging in my room alone energizes me and makes me feel more…alive? human? (is that too dramatic?)

Explore more. Even though the winters make all of us want to crawl in our beds and never leave our apartments, it is important to have a change of scenery every once in a while. Plus, you never know what you will find…

So, I can’t believe I am saying this but: here’s to being ~unproductive~!

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for quite some time now. But in all honesty, every time I have sat down to type it, I’m at a loss for words.

For those of you who do not know, I got my heart broken this past spring. And it hurt like hell. It has taken a long time, but through the support of my friends & family, my debit card and a few too many vodka crans, I am finally ready to confront my heartbreak.

Last year, I vividly remember sitting in my bed one night after having a conversation with one of my best friends about how there was absolutely no way that me or my significant other would ever break up. Strangely enough, this did not bring me comfort. It scared me.

At 19, it seemed that my most significant trait was my relationship status.

Up until that point, so much of my life had revolved around my life with my boyfriend that I hadn’t considered how I would live it without him. I felt like I couldn’t. It was in that moment that I realized that too much of me was defined by him

And for the sake of not revealing every detail of my life on the internet: me and my boyfriend of the time decided to break up for reasons I wish to stay private.

Even though I knew in my heart that breaking up was the right thing to do, I was devastated by our split. I lost my best friend. My first love. My person. And because of that, I lost myself for a little while too.

For the weeks months proceeding my breakup with my long time boyfriend, I pretended that I wasn’t hurting as much as I actually was. Whenever my friends and family tried to talk to me about it, I gave them a vague, rehearsed answer about how the ‘timing’ just wasn’t right, or about how it was for the best. And while those things may be true, I quite literally blocked off the part of myself that was suffering deeply. And I did this because I was embarrassed. Ashamed even.

In all honesty, it was one of the first times I had failed and was forced to address that failure publicly. I felt like I had let down every single person who had been rooting for our relationship, including myself. How could I let something that seemed so meant to be get away from me like that?

I held onto this guilt for quite some time before having an epitome: it was not my responsibility to make a broken thing work. As obvious as it may seem, I finally realized that I had no obligation to fix what could not be fixed. I, and no one for that matter, is required to give up a part of themselves to keep another person whole. As one of my favorite quotes goes, “you cannot set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.” True love does not require that.

Our generation has romanticized relationships so much that the only way we recognize them as ‘real’ is if we desperately fight for them. And even though I love Chuck and Blaire just as much as the next girl, being deeply pained by a relationship is not healthy. Far from it. And I would go as far to argue that if you are on the verge of giving everything you have to fight to keep someone in your life, you should do what I did and let go. And even though that is easier said than done, it will be worth it.

Because as much as heartbreaking feels like it’s going to kill you, it never does.

I can honestly say that I have never felt so deeply connected to myself than I do right now. I am more me than I have ever been.

And that is the most beautiful part about losing the person you love the most.

I have been able to live so much more honestly and openly as a result of being single. For the first time in a while, I have been able to think clearly about what my dreams and desires are, without the fear of worrying about how I am going to fit someone else into them.

As I enter my 20’s, I want to embrace that these are my selfish years. These are the years that matter the most. The years that the best memories come from. I do not want to look back and see a girl who suffered because she spread herself too thin. I want to look back and see myself (maybe) making a few bad decisions or two, but hopefully being able to laugh about how it made me a better person. I want to look back and see a girl who took risks instead of living confined in her comfort zone. I want to look back and see someone who spent these years pursuing her ambitions and passions, not seeking approval from others. I want to look back and see a girl who chose herself before she chose another person.

So, here’s to being single. And while I honestly do love it, there are days that I love it less.

I would by lying if I was to say that there are never moments that I don’t question ever decision I have ever made, but I feel as if I have come to a point in my life that I am able to accept my decision. And to accept myself.

Love is the most crazy, mind-blowing, and awe-inspiring feeling on in the world. And because I am no longer in a relationship, I still have to remind myself that love still exists. It surrounds me everyday. And I want to end this blog post by sharing something that my younger, (but maybe even wiser?) self wrote a few years back:

“Love, I have found is the most misunderstood word in the English language. We take its definition and give it boundaries to stay within and yet, love grows most in the places where it seems most prohibited or impossible. Human culture is so obsessed with defining and categorizing things that we forget that some things just are. And still, we come up with rules, theories and conclusions to try to understand something that deep down we all know cannot be understood. It has took me a long time to realize this, but through time I have discovered that love just is. It can be anything and it can be found in anyone. It is not just one feeling, but a circuit and series of emotions. If we took the time to slow down our lives and to stop searching for love we can find it surrounding the atmosphere like air. It’s in the arms of a mother, the smile of a stranger and in the forgiveness of a sinner. No matter how dark the world may becomes we can still find hope in the sense that love never dies, but is always swimming in and consuming the hearts of each soul on this planet.”

And so if you’re just scrolling down to get the summary of this blog post it’s this: heart break sucks, but there is always a silver lining to it. Until next time.

Hello! August is nearly halfway over and I can hardly believe it. With school starting soon I thought I would share some of the beauty products, films, fashion items, music, and literature I have been obsessing over this summer.

I’ve been on the search for a new holy grail foundation, and let me tell you: this is it. This foundation is full coverage, easy to blend, and wears beautifully throughout the day. Plus it’s almost half the price of the foundation I was using before. A high end product without the spendy price tag? I’ll take it.

I’ll admit it. I’m pretty late to the whole coconut oil bandwagon. (But better late than never right)? I picked this bad boy up at TJ Maxx a couple of weeks ago and have been using it to wash my face at night in place of a cleanser. As someone who has really dry skin, the results have been amazing. My skin used to feel tight and scratchy after washing it with a face wash, but now that I’ve switched over to this product my skin feels as hydrated as ever.

Laura Mercier who? In my opinion, this product has changed the game. It performs just as well as high end brand’s powders and retails for just $9.00 (some of yall’s Starbucks orders are more than this). All jokes aside though, after using this powder my skin looks seamless and airbrushed. Also, there is little to no flashback so you don’t have to worry about having a Flashback Mary moment. If you know, you know.

The only actual movie I have in my film category for August, probably because this movie surpassed all the others that I’ve recently seen. I would gladly lay my life down for Lily James and Josh Dylan. Enough said.

This series gives a raw and shocking glimpse in what it is like to be the ever infamous makeup guru, Jeffree Star. I’ve been a long time fan of Jeffree’s videos but this series gave me a deeper understanding of his flawed and broken past, as well as allowed me to see that beyond the wealthy and extravagant person Jeffree is, there is a genuine and relatable human being that so many know and love.

Siena is my favorite youtuber. She is quirky, witty, intelligent, and her videos are truly an art form. Personally, I love to listen to her podcast, book, and music recommendations through her favorite videos. She is the definition of ~aesthetic~. And for sure my girl crush.

If I made a favorite’s blog every month, these bad boys would be featured in every single one. Truly my favorite pair of shoes ever. Are you going to drag me for being basic? Probably. Do I care? Absolutely not.

I received this bag for Christmas this past year and I have gotten so much use out of it. It’s especially great for traveling and has SO much room for all the stuff you definitely don’t need in your purse but put in there anyways ~just in case.~

My favorite song ever. I think it’s truly impossible to explain how I feel when I listen to this song but I imagine its how Charlie from The Perks of Being a Wallflower (also a great movie if you haven’t seen it) feels when he’s on top of the car in the tunnel and says “in that moment we were infinite.” You feel me? Okay, I’m glad. Moving on.

Florence and the Machine. They just get me. This song confronts all of the ways humans try to fight off their loneliness, often making them more isolated than they were before. It’s a sad song with an upbeat tempo. I’m here for it.

This book is a memoir written by Alice Sebold, who is also the author of the best-seller The Lovely Bones. This is Sebold’s first novel and it begins with her being cruelly raped during her freshman year of college and continues through an excruciating trial with her rapist, and follows Sebold as she learns to make sense of her brokenness. It’s a tough read, but it’s an important one.

If you love writing as much as me, you will love this book. If you don’t love writing as much as me, you probably will be ungodly bored by this book. 🙂 Just looking out for all of my #fans out there (I’m begging you to understand the sarcasm here).

Okay, you know when I said Siena was my girl crush? I lied. It’s most definitely Indy Blue. Both her videos and blog will inspire you to live a more intentional, genuine, and spontaneous life. For sure check her out if you haven’t. And watch this video if you want to be in awe of our extraordinary world, and super jealous of Indy’s remarkable life. (Oh, and if you want to cry just a little). youtube.com/watch

You can’t make people love you. And as hard as that is to accept at times, it is not a reflection of you.

Stop apologizing for things that don’t require an apology. Your life is not dependent on other people’s happiness. It is dependent on your own.

Pursue your passions, not your back up plans.

Invest in the people who invest in you. Flaky/inconsistent/downrightbad friendships are cancelled in 2018.

That being said, find your #GirlGang that will support you, love you, and will consistently be loyal to you. These people will become your backbone.

Never stop learning, reading, educating yourself, etc. Whether it is through traditional schooling methods or taking a more unorthodox approach, knowledge is one of the only things that cannot be taken away from you. Education=Power!

The Green Passion Power smoothie from Panera can (and will!) cure the worst of hangovers.

Heartbreak sucks, but it does not suck enough to give up on love. Love, for lack of better words, is beautiful, chaotic, and always worth it.

Quality over quantity applies to almost everything in life.

Learn how to say no to people. Learn how to not feel guilty about it either.

Dance parties with your friends or by yourself will always make you feel a little (or a lot) better. *Cue Shake it Off by Taylor Swift*

Stick up for yourself. ESPECIALLY for all my ladies out there! Do not allow people to walk over you, belittle you, or take advantage of you. Every human being is worthy of respect.

Be nice to people. Just because the world lacks compassion and empathy, does not mean you need to as well.

“Your vibe attracts your tribe.” You get out of the world what you put into the world. Simple as THAT.

Learn to be happy for your friends’ success. Although it can be easy to view life as a competition, success is self defined and everyone will experience it at different times. Let’s celebrate all the #girlbosses out there!

Work hard. Whether it is at school, your job, or in your personal life people will notice. And it will set you apart.

Never burn a bridge. Build a new one without tearing an existing one down.

Spend time hanging out with your parents and siblings. Tell them you love them. They are some of the best friends you will ever have. Mom, if you are reading this, just know you are the realest.

Always get your hair wet at the pool. Life is too short to care that much about your hair.

Alas, the most important lesson: experience life. Embrace the heartbreak, the laughter, the joy, the sadness, and everything in between. Life is too precious to spend it in the passenger seat.